Computer networks are an integral part of many industries and, in particular, to their daily operations. For example, the financial industry relies heavily on information transmission over computer networks to keep a constant watch on the latest financial trends and forecasts. Financial forecasts and data may change at a submillisecond frequency. Similarly, with the advent of on-line gaming, the reliability and speed of data transmission over computer networks has also come into focus. In each of the aforementioned examples as well as in many other scenarios, measuring various aspects of network performance such as latency is often important to ensure that messages and data are appropriately processed and addressed. Such measurements allow network users to compensate for latency when implementing services or programs.
Current methods of measuring latency typically involve a master clock that synchronizes the clocks of each node in the computer network so that, theoretically, the timestamps at each node are synchronized. However, such methods often do not account for the delays between the master clock and each of the nodes the master clock is synchronizing. In addition, having each node provide its own timestamps and/or independently calculate the latency of the network consumes processing resources of the node.
For the foregoing reasons, a system and method of enhancing the accuracy and processing efficiency of measuring latency is needed.